Top managers in public organizations: A systematic literature review and future research directions

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Ting Huang,Anders Ryom Villadsen
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13628

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Top managers in public organizations: A systematic literature

review and future research directions

Ting Huang | Anders Ryom Villadsen

Department of Management, Aarhus University,

Aarhus V, Denmark

Correspondence

Anders Ryom Villadsen, Department of

Management, Aarhus University, Fuglesangs Alle

4, Building 2628, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark.

Email: avilladsen@mgmt.au.dk

Abstract

Despite increasing attention, top management research has been heavily domi-

nated by a focus on private companies with much less emphasis on the top man-

agers in public organizations. We present a systematic literature review of

212 studies focused on public sector top managers published between 2005 and

2020. First, the paper provides descriptive results suggesting that the empirical

focus on top managers in the public sector is increasing, though still limited com-

pared to research on upper echelons in private firms. Second, we develop an

empirically based “systems”model illustrating the role and function of top man-

agers in public organizations. We use the model to show that the components of

top management are interdependent, adaptive, and embedded in complex rela-

tionships in the system, and to identify avenues for future research.

Evidence for practice

•With decades of public management reforms, top managers have become

increasingly important actors with discretion and autonomy to fundamentally

affect operations and performance in public organizations.

•Based on a systematic review of 212 studies, this article presents public sector

top managers as actors in a system that responds to internal and external inputs

and engages in a series of decisional, interpersonal, and informational processes

to obtain individual and organizational outcomes.

•Top management in the public sector is different from the private sector, and

integrating public values and political influence into top management work is

important to achieve public service outcomes.

INTRODUCTION

Upper echelon theory famously posits that organizations

are reflections of their top managers (Hambrick &

Mason, 1984). Since its early formulations, this idea has

spurred a substantial stream of research documenting

how top managers shape organizational processes and

outcomes in organizations. Researchers in the public

administration field have increasingly recognized the key

role that top managers play in public organizations.

Within the past decades, we have seen an increasing

number of studies that put top managers at center stage

to understand the workings of public organizations.

Researchers have been increasingly interested in the

impact of demographic characteristics of top managers

(Opstrup & Villadsen, 2015) and linked top management

(TM) to important outcomes such as innovation (Anessi-

Pessina & Sicilia, 2020), performance (Avellaneda, 2016),

and policy diffusion (Yi & Liu, 2022).

Despite the increasing attention, TM research has

been dominated by a focus on private companies with

much less focus on the top managers in public organi-

zations.

1

One of the reasons that may explain this is

that in the public sector, administrative top managers

are executing politicians’decisions and priorities. While

they are often in charge of large organizations and sub-

stantial budgets, in the public sector, top managers

operate outside of the public spotlight. But operating

Received: 29 November 2021 Revised: 14 March 2023 Accepted: 16 March 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13628

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1618 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1618–1634.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

under the radar does not mean top managers are unim-

portant. They work closely with politicians, engage in

strategizing, and fundamentally affect organizations’

performance (Leach & Lowndes, 2007). Top managers in

public organizations certainly merit attention of

their own.

This paper adds to our theoretical understanding of

the role of top managers in public organizations by inte-

grating insights from existing research. By now, several

reviews of upper echelons research in private firms have

been conducted to examine the state-of-the-art in this

area and establish new avenues for theory developing

and research (Finkelstein, Hambrick, & Cannella, 2009;

Samimi, Cortes, Anderson, & Herrmann, 2022). To our

knowledge, there has been no similar attempt to synthe-

size current knowledge on TM in public organizations.

With this paper, we seek to take stock of existing

research to understand existing knowledge about top

managers in public organizations and, on this back-

ground, generate new theoretical insights about how top

managers influence organizations’processes and out-

comes. We present a systematic review of 212 studies

focused on top managers in public organizations pub-

lished from 2005 to 2020. We take inspiration from sys-

tems theory to theorize how TM can be understood as a

complex system of inputs, actors, processes, and interac-

tions that together explain organizational outcomes

(Nadler & Tushman, 1980).

Based on existing research, we develop an integrative

and comprehensive model of the top management “sys-

tem”that allows us to make three important contribu-

tions to existing research. First, the model presents a

taxonomy of research on the role of top managers in pub-

lic organizations by identifying the main components and

explaining how TM dynamics contributes to the out-

comes of public organizations. Second, the systems-based

model illustrates top managers’roles in public organiza-

tions as much more multifaceted and complex than what

is highlighted in individual studies. The findings also sug-

gest that TM dynamics in public organizations are differ-

ent from TM dynamics in private organizations. Finally,

the model helps delineate an agenda for future research.

We argue that public organizations reflect their upper

echelons, and we need more research to understand this

topic better.

METHODOLOGY

We take a point of departure in a systematic literature

review to take stock of the research on top management

in the public sector. As we describe below, our focus is on

research that provides insights into who top managers

are, what they do, and how they contribute to organiza-

tional outcomes. This section will describe our search

strategy, eligibility criteria, and selection methods.

Literature search

We carried out a literature search in two databases, Web

of Science and Scopus, using different word combinations

to identify TM research in the public sector. The detailed

search terms can be found in Table A1 in Appendix S1. To

focus on recent research, we limit our search to the

period from 2005 to 2020. The initial search identified

7875 records. We included research articles in academic

journals but have not included books.

Eligibility criteria

Research from our original search was included in the sys-

tematic review if it met all the following eligibility criteria:

•Field: Studies should have top managers in the public

sector as a central focus. The public sector is defined as

those parts of economies that are either owned or

directly controlled by the state.

•Topic: The studies should have TM as an explicit and

core focus. This study follows the upper echelons

theory to focus on those managers occupying the

top administrative positions in public organizations.

This means that, for instance, we do not include

studiesusingsurveyswheretopmanagerswere

among the respondents but not constituting the

core focus. We also exclude research that studies top

managers from the point of view of employees or

politicians.

•Delimitation of TM: We are interested in the appointed

top managers in public organizations and initially exclude

elected politicians. In some settings, these roles conflate

when politicians, such as mayors, perform both political

and administrative work. These studies are included when

authors explicitly focus on the administrative role and the-

orize the mayors as top managers or chief executives

rather than politicians (e.g., Avellaneda, 2016). Further,

public organizations often are part of a complex hierarchy

of different organizations, administrative levels, and juris-

dictions, so compared to private firms, it can be unclear

who is part of the top manager category. We define pub-

lic sector top managers as individuals or teams in charge of

well-defined and relatively independent organizational enti-

ties lending discretion to top managers and include studies

accordingly.

•Study design: Only empirical studies were included in

our analysis because we are interested in empirical evi-

dence on top managers in the public sector. All

research designs were considered, including question-

naires, case studies, experiments, etc.

•Year of publication: We focus on recent research and

include studies published from 2005 to 2020 in our

analysis.

•Language: Publications in English-language outlets.

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